Boyle J.A. The Cambridge History of Iran, Volume 5: The Saljuq and Mongol Periods

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CHAPTER I

THE

POLITICAL

AND

DYNASTIC

HISTORY

OF THE

IRANIAN

WORLD

(A.D.

000-1217)

I. THE EASTERN IRANIAN WORLD ON THE EVE

OF THE TURKISH INVASIONS

For nearly a thousand years—indeed, until our own century—Iran

has generally been ruled by non-Persian dynasties, usually Turkish but

sometimes Mongol or Kurdish. This domination at the highest

level

has had less

effect

on Iranian national psychology and literary con-

sciousness

than

might be expected, for all of the alien ruling dynasties

have

come from races of low cultural development, and

thus

they have

lacked

the administrative expertise necessary for ruling a land of ancient

settlement and civilization. Whether consciously or unconsciously,

they have adopted Iranian culture at their courts, and they have been

compelled

to employ Iranian

officials

to administer the country and

collect

the taxes.

The

first such alien rulers were the Saljuq Turks, who appeared in

the Iranian world in the first half of the 5th/nth century. For them as

well

as for their successors, the process of assimilation to the indi-

genous

culture and practices of Persia was not uncongenial, because

they were able to draw on the country's ancient traditions of exalted

monarchic power and submissiveness by the people. Moreover, in

these traditions kingly authority was identified with divine authority,

which

helped the dynasties to rise above their tribal origins. The

Saljuqs

had originated as chieftains of nomadic bands in the Central

Asian

steppes. Their powers and ambitions often hedged about by a

complex

of traditional tribal rights and customs, the steppe leaders were

little more

than

primi

inter pares amongst the heads of all the prominent

tribal families. With their entry into the Iranian world, the Saljuqs

and their successors found the instruments at hand with which to make

themselves,

if they so desired, despots of the traditional Persian stamp:

these instruments were a settled administration, a steady revenue from

taxation, and usually a personal guard and standing army.

BCH

THE

IRANIAN

WORLD (A.D.

IOOO-1217)

Yet

the process of self-magnification had a reverse side. What was to

be done with the ladder by which these leaders had risen? For their

supporters had included

fellow

tribesmen, e.g. the Saljuqs' Turkmen;

military retainers, such as the Turkish and Mongol soldiers of the

Mongol

Qa'ans, and

fellow

sectaries and religious devotees, such as

the Safavids' Qïzïl-Bâsh. In the Saljuq period the O

ghuz and other

Turkmen were a pressing problem for the sultans. How could the

Turkmen be reconciled to the new concept of royal power—especially

when they saw the old tribal custom, which defined and guaranteed

each man's personal position and duties, quietly set aside and replaced

the Islamic sharfa and by the

Iranian

governmental ethos, in

both of which political quietism and virtually unconditional obedience

to the monarch were enjoined? This question, in varying terms,

runs

through much of

Iran's

history in the last nine centuries, underlying

THE EASTERN IRANIAN WORLD

many of its revolutions and crises of

power.

It is particularly important

in the age of the Saljuqs, when the sultans were never able satisfactorily

to resolve this tension in their empire.

Whilst

it is

true

that

the coming of the Saljuqs inaugurated the age

alien,

especially Turkish, rule, the change was not absolutely abrupt.

shall first of all be concerned with the eastern Iranian world, com-

prising Khurasan, the adjoining regions of modern Afghanistan, and

the lands of the Oxus and Syr Darya basins. At the opening of the

5th/nth century, the Iranian world still extended far beyond the

Oxus,

embracing the regions of Khwarazm, Transoxiana (called by the

Arabs

ward*

al-nahr,

"the lands beyond the river"), and Farghana.

In pre-Christian and early Christian times the Massagetae, the Sakae,

the

Scyths,

the Sarmatians, and the

Alans—all

Indo-European peoples—

had roamed the Eurasian steppes from the Ukraine to the

Altai.

The

pressure of Altaic and Ugrian peoples from the heartland of Central

Asia

and Siberia gradually pushed the limits of Indo-European occu-

pation southwards, but until the end of the 4th/ioth century the lands

along

the Oxus and south of the

Aral

Sea, together with the middle and

upper reaches of the Syr Darya as far as its sources in the slopes of the

T'ien

Shan, were still generally ruled by royal dynasties or local princes

who

were apparently Iranian. The picture presented by the holders of

power

thus

relatively straightforward, except

that

the Iranian names

and titles of petty rulers and local landowners

(dihqdns)

in such frontier

regions as Isfijab, Ilaq, and Far

ghana do not make it absolutely certain

that

they were racially Iranians. However, a demographic analysis of

the whole population in this Iranian-ruled area involves certain

diffi-

culties.

From the earliest times Transoxiana has been a corridor through

which

peoples from the steppes have passed into the settled lands to the

south and west;

thus

history and geography have worked against an

ethnic homogeneity for the region. Whether the invading waves have

receded or been swallowed up in the existing population, a human

debris has inevitably been left behind. This was undoubtedly the

origin

of the Turkish elements in eastern Afghanistan, for these

Oghuz

and Khalaj were nomads on the plateau between Kabul and

Bust

when Muslim arms first penetrated there in the early centuries of

Islam, and they survived as an ethnic unity throughout the periods of

the Ghaznavids, Ghurids, and Khwarazm-Shahs. It has been plausibly

argued by J. Marquart

that

these Turks were remnants of peoples

brought from

north

of the Oxus by the confederation of the Ephthalites

1-2

THE IRANIAN WORLD (A.D.

IOOO-I217)

or White Huns, whose leaders seem to have been of the same race as

the Iranians.

In Transoxiana and Khwarazm, the infiltration of Turkish elements

must also have begun early. Topography—i.e. the mountain chains

running east and west, the land-locked river basins and oases—made

Transoxiana and especially Soghdia (the basin of the Zarafshan river)

a politically fragmented region. In the ist/yth and

2nd/8th

centuries

the region was a battleground where Iranian rulers fought the invading

Arabs

from the south as

well

as the Western Turk or T'u-chueh from

the north, with the Chinese keeping an eye on what w^as nominally a

distant province of their empire. Turkish warriors were frequently

invited from outside by the local rulers in an effort to repel the Arabs,

but it is also possible

that

some of these troops were recruited from the

Turks already settled within the borders of Transoxiana.

For not all

Turks were pastoral nomads or forest hunters. In such comparatively

favoured spots of Central

Asia

as the Orkhon and Selenga

valleys

Mongolia,

and the Chu

valley

and shores of the

lsiq-K6l

in Semirechye

("land of the seven rivers", or the

northern

part

of the modern

Soviet

Kirghiz

republic and the

parts

of the Kazakh republic adjoining its

northern

borders)—in all these areas Turkish agriculturalists had been

able to make a

living

in peaceful periods.

Similarly, the rural peasantry

and even the town populations of Transoxiana and Khwarazm may

well

have contained Turkish elements from an early date. Firdausi's

Shah-Nama speaks of

Iran

and Turan, i.e. the Iranians and the Turks, as

two

naturally antipathetic groups: " two elements, fire and water, which

rage against each other in the depths of the heart",

but the economic

facts,

well

brought out by the Arabic geographers, belie this. They say

that

the economy of the pastoralist Turks from the steppe was com-

plementary to and interdependent with the economy of the agricultural

Marquart,

"Eransahr

nach

der

Geographie

des Ps.

Moses

Khorenac'i",

Abh. der

Konigl.

Gesell.

der Wiss. %u Gottingen, p. 253; idem and J. J. M. de

Groot,

"Das

Reich

Zabul und der Gott £un", Festschrift Eduard

Sachau(Berlin,

1915), pp.

257-8.

The

Iranian

ethnic

nature

of the

Ephthalites

has

recently

been

affirmed

by R.

Ghirshman,

Les

Chionites-

Hephtalites

(Cairo,

1946).

For a

contrary

opinion

see E. G.

Pulleyblank,

"The

Consonantal

System

of Old

Chinese:

Part

II", Asia Major, N.S., vol. ix

(1963),

pp.

207-65

(258-60).

Cf. R. N.

Frye

and A. M.

Sayili,

"Turks

in the

Middle

East

before

the

Saljuqs",

][ournal

the]

A[merican] 0[riental] S[o"iety], pp. 196 ff.; see

also

forthcoming

chapter

Bosworth

on the

Turks

in the

early

Islamic

world,

in C.

Cahen

(ed.),

Philologiae

Turcicae

Fundamenta, vol. in

(Wiesbaden).

Cf. O.

Lattimore,

"The

Geographical Factor

Mongol

History",

Geographical

Journal

vol. xci

(January

1938),

pp. 1-20.

Cf. T.

Kowalski,

"Les

Turcs

dans

Sah-name",Roc^nik

Orientalistyc^ny,

vol.

xv(1939-

49) pp. 87 ff.

THE EASTERN IRANIAN WORLD

oases

and

towns

of the

Iranian

Tajiks.

The

settled regions supplied

the

nomads with cereals, manufactured goods,

and

arms,

and the

nomads

reared stock animals

and

brought dairy products, hides,

and

furs

to the

farmers.

Transoxiana

and

Khwarazm, wrote al-Istakhri

(c.

340/951),

the O

ghuz

and

Qarluq from beyond

the

Syr Darya

and

from

the

Qara

Qum

steppes supplied horses, sheep, camels, mules,

and

asses.

It is

likely,

too,

that

some

the pastoralists remained

in the

market centres

the

settled region

and

gradually settled down within

its

borders.

The

rule

native Iranian dynasties

Khwarazm, Transoxiana,

and

Khurasan foundered

by the

opening decades

of the

5th/nth century.

The

Samanids

Bukhara

had

ruled

in the

latter

two

provinces, first

as local administrators

for the

'Abbasid governors

Khurasan,

and

then

virtually independent sovereigns.

In the

last decade

of the

10th

century their rule sustained almost simultaneous attacks from

two

Turkish

powers,

the

Qarakhanids

and the

Ghaznavids.

The

Qara-

khanids originated from

confederation of Turkish tribes who had long

occupied

the

steppes

that

stretched from

the

middle

Syr

Darya

to the

ien

Shan. Their nucleus seems

have been

the

Qarluq tribe

and its

component peoples

of the

Yaghma,

Tukhsi,

and

Chigil.

The

Qarluq

were

an old

people

in the

steppes, known from

the

ist/yth century

a constituent group within

the

Turku empire. Already

the

characteristic

title

for

their

chiefs,

Ilig, appears

in the

Turfan texts

that

period;

and

later times Muslim sources often refer

to the

Qarakhanid

dynasty

that

of the

Ilig-Khans. Within

the

various confederations

that

took shape

in the

steppes after

the

collapse

of the

Turku empire

125

/y41,

the

head

the Qarluq assumed

the

title first

Yabghu

and

then

Qaghan (Arabic form, Khdqari),

"supreme monarch".

The

adoption

this latter title was

become characteristic

of the

Qara-

khanids, whereas

the

Saljuqs never felt entitled

adopt it.

In the

course

the

4th/ioth century

the

Qarluq became Muslim;

the

first ruler

become

converted

traditionally held

to be

Satuq Bughra Khan

(d.

344/955),

who

assumed

the

Islamic name

Abd

al-Karim

and

reigned from Kashghar

and

Talas over

the

western wing

his people.

al-Istakhri,Kitdh

masdlik

al-mamdlik,

p. 274; cf. Bos

worth,

The Gha^navids: their Umpire

Afghanistan

and Eastern

Iran

994-1040,

pp.

154-5.

There exists no special monograph devoted to the Samanids; the best account of this

very

important but still obscure dynasty remains that by W. Barthold in his

Turkestan

down

to the

Mongol Invasion,

G[ibb] M[emorial] S[eries], vol. v, pp. 209 ff. See also Frye's

brief survey, "The Samanids: a Little-Known Dynasty",

Muslim World,

pp. 40-5; and

idem,

The

History

Bukhara

(a translation of Narshakhi's

Ta'rlkh-i Bukhara),

the

notes

which contain much valuable information on the Samanids.

THE IRANIAN WORLD (A.D.

IOOO-I217)

Those

who worked in the pagan outer darkness of the steppes were

mainly the dervishes or

Sufis,

i.e. religious enthusiasts whose orthodoxy

was

suspect, and who were often persona non

grata

to the orthodox

Samanid government and religious institution. Nevertheless the

Qarakhanids became firm Sunnis once they entered the Islamic world.

The

Qarakhanid Bughra Khan

Harun

or Hasan, a grandson of Satuq

ghra Khan, temporarily occupied the Samanid capital of Bukhara

in 382/992. As he passed through Transoxiana he met with little

opposition: indeed, he was encouraged in his action by the rebellious

Samanid general Abu 'All Simjuri and also by discontented dihqans.

Faced

with the Qarakhanid invasion from the

north

and the revolt of

the generals

Abu

Ali

Simjuri and Fa'iq Khassa in Khurasan, the Samanid

amir Nuh b. Mansur (366-87/976-7 to 997) was compelled to call in

from Ghazna another of his Turkish slave commanders, Sebiik-Tegin.

Abu

Mansur Sebuk-Tegin (d. 387/997) was the founder of the

Ghaznavid

dynasty and father of the famous Mahmud of Ghazna

(388-421/998-1030).

Sebuk-Tegin came originally from Barskhan, a

settlement on the shores of the Isiq-Kol, whose ruler, according to the

anonymous

author

of the Persian geographical treatise Hudud al-alam

("Limits of the World"), was one of the Qarluq. It seems therefore

probable

that

the Ghaznavids were of Qarluq origin. In a tribal war

Sebiik-Tegin

was captured by the neighbouring Tukhsi and sold in a

Samanid slave market at Chach. Because of his hardiness and his skill

with

weapons, he rose rapidly from the ranks of the Samanids' slave

guards, coming

under

the patronage of

Chief

jib

or Commander-in-

Chief

Alp-Tegin.

In 351/962 he accompanied his master to Ghazna,

where

Alp-Tegin

henceforth established himself as ruler, and in

366/977 Sebiik-Tegin succeeded to power there, continuing, like his

predecessors, to regard himself as governor

there

on behalf of the

Samanids.

In 384/994 the amir Nuh b. Mansur summoned Sebiik-

Tegin

to Khurasan to fight the rebellious generals but this led to the

establishment of the Ghaznavids in Khurasan and all the Samanid

The

Qarakhanids

and the

Qarluq,

from

whom

the

dynasty

very probably

sprang,

have

been

studied

by O.

Pritsak.

Amongst

his

many

articles

them,

see

especially

"Kara-

hanlilar"

Islam

Ansiklopedisi; and on the

origins

of the

dynasty,

"Von den

Karluk

den

Karachaniden

Zeitscbrift der

Deutschen

Morgenldndischen

Gesellschaft,

pp.

270-300.

Cf.

Barthold,

Turkestan,

pp.

254-61.

On the

Ghaznavid

dynasty,

see B.

Spuler,

Ghaznavids",

Encyc. of

Islam

(2nd ed.);

Nazim,

The Life and

Times

Sultan

Mahmud

of Ghazna; and

Bosworth,

The Ghaznavids.

Sebuk-Tegin's

early

life

and his

rule

governor

Ghazna,

see

Nazim,

op. cit.

pp.

28-33,

and

Bosworth,

The Ghaznavids, pp.

35-44.

THE EASTERN IRANIAN WORLD

provinces south of the

Oxus.

These territories were definitely annexed

388/998

by Abu'l-Qasim Mahmud b. Sebuk-Tegin. Meanwhile it

had proved impossible to dislodge the Qarakhanids from the Syr

Darya

basin, and in 389/999 the Samanid dynasty was definitely over-

thrown in Transoxiana by the Ilig Nasr b. 'Ali (d.

403/1012-13),

nephew of Bughra Khan

Harun.

The heroism of the last of the

Samanids, Isma'il al-Muntasir, could achieve nothing in the face of the

division

of the Samanid empire between the Ilig and Mahmud. In

391/1001

these two came to a formal agreement whereby the Oxus was

to be the boundary between the two kingdoms, and in 395/1005

Isma'il was killed through the treachery of an Arab nomad

chief

the Qara Qum desert.

In the adjacent province of Khwarazm, the classical Chorasmia, the

days

of rule by native

Iranian

monarchs were also numbered. For

several

thousand years the region of the lower Oxus had held a complex

rich agricultural oases linked by irrigation canals, the full extent of

which

has only recently come to light through the researches of

Soviet

archaeologists. (The

Iranian

scholar al-Biruni says

that

the

Khwarazmian

era began when the region was first settled and cultivated,

this

date

being placed in the early 13th-century

B.C.)

That the ancient

dynasty of Afrighid Khwarazm-Shahs survived for nearly

three

cen-

turies after the coming of Islam to their land is unique in the Islamic

world:

al-Biruni lists twenty-two rulers of this line running from

A.D.

305 to 385/995.

However, the vandalism of Qutaibab. Muslim's

invading Arabs in

93/712

had an enfeebling effect on the culture of

ancient Khwarazm, and this seems to have been aggravated by

economic decline, whose symptoms, according to S. P. Tolstov, in-

cluded the neglect of irrigation works and the decline of

urban

life.

The

system

large

fortified

estates,

which

characteristic

Khwarazm-

ian agrarian society at this time, was a response to increasing external

pressure from Turkish steppe peoples, who were

attracted

not only by

prospects of plunder but also by the winter

pasture

available along the

shores of the

Oxus.

The Turkicizing of the population of Khwarazm

probably began during this period.

In the 4th/ioth century

there

were

Barthold,

Turkestan, pp. 261-721; and idem, "A

Short

History

Turkestan",

in Four

Studies

the History of Central Asia, vol. i, pp. 21-4.

al-Biruni,

al-Athdr al-baqiya 'an al-quriin al-khaliya (tr. E.

Sachau,

The

Chronology

Ancient Nations), pp. 40-2.

Sachau,

"Zur

Geschichte

und

Chronologie

von

Khwarizm",

S\it%ungs-]

B[erichte

der]

W[iener]

A[kad.

der]

W[iss.],

Phil.-Hist.

C, vol. LXXXIII, 1873; vol. LXXIV, 1873, pp. 471ft".

THE IRANIAN WORLD (A.D.

IOOO--1217)

villages

with Turkish names on the right bank of the

Oxus.

The

Ghaznavid

historian

Abu'1-Fadl

Baihaqi speaks of Qi'pchaq, Küjet,

and

Chaghraq Turks harrying the fringes of Khwárazm in 422/103o,

and a few years after this the Saljuqs and their followers spent some

time on

Khwárazmian pastures before moving southwards into

Khurasan. The higher culture of Iranian

Khwárazm offered resistance

to the process of Turkicization, but the

trend

nevertheless continued

over

the next centuries (see pp. 141-2 below).

In spite of this, the downfall of the native Afrighid dynasty of

Khwárazm-Sháhs

in 385/995 came about through internal disturbances.

Gurganj,

a town on the left bank of the

Oxus,

had grown in importance

as the terminus of caravan

trade

across the Oghuz steppes to the

Volga

and southern Russia, thereby eclipsing the ancient capital on the right

bank of Káth. A local Gurganj family, the Ma'münids, succeeded in

deposing the last Afrighid,

Abü 'Abdallah Muhammad, and assumed

the traditional title of

Khwárazm-Sháh.

But their

tenure

of power was

brief. The Sámánids had been nominal suzerains of

Khwárazm,

though

in practice they had rarely interfered there; now the shadow of their

supplanter,

Mahmüd of Ghazna, grew menacing for the Ma'münids.

In 406/1015-16 Abu'l-'Abbás Ma'mün b. Ma'mün married one of

the Ghaznavid sultan's sisters, Hurra-yi

Kalji;

nevertheless, Ghaznavid

pressure was relentless. The 'Abbásid caliph in Baghdad sent directly to

the

Khwárazm-Sháh a patent of investiture for

Khwárazm,

a standard,

and the honorific titles 'Ain al-Daula wa Zain al-Milla ("Eye of the State

and Ornament

the

Religious

Community

");

but the shah did not dare

to receive these publicly in his capital Gurganj for fear of provoking

Mahmüd's wrath. In the sultan's imperial strategy, possession of

Khwá-

razm was necessary to

turn

the flank

the Qarakhánids, amongst whom

the ruler of Samarqand and Bukhara—'AH b. Hasan Bughra Khan,

known

AH-Tegin

(d. 425/1034)—was showing himself an implacable

enemy of the Ghaznavids. After an ultimatum to the Khwárazmians,

which

contained humiliating demands and required the renunciation of

national

sovereignty,

Mahmüd's troops invaded and annexed Khwárazm

in 408/1017. The sultan then installed as Khwárazm-Sháh Altun-Tash,

one of his most trusted slave generals and a former ghuldm or military

retainer of his father

Sebük-Tegin; for the next seventeen years

Khwá-

506; A. Z. V.

Togan,

"The

Khorezmians

and

their

Civilisation",

Preface

Zamakhshari's

Muqaddimat

al-Adab, pp. 9-43; S. P.

Tolstov,

Auj

den

Spuren

der

Altchoresmischen

Kuliur,

pp.

Baihaqi,

Ta'rikh-i Mas'üdi, p. 86; cf.

Bosworth,

The Ghaznavids, p. 109.

THE EASTERN IRANIAN WORLD

razm remained a salient of Ghaznavid power

that

reached into the

steppes.

Some

Western orientalists have viewed the downfall of these

north-

eastern Iranian dynasties through a certain romantic haze. They have

idealized

the Samanids, at whose court the renaissance of New Persian

culture and literature began—a court adorned by such figures as

Bal'ami,

Rudaki, and Daqiqi; or, mourning the passing of the

Khwa-

razm-Shahs, whose kingdom

nurtured

the polymath al-Biruni, they have

called

it the end of an epoch, after whicli

Iran

lost political control of

its destiny for many centuries.

On the other hand, as V. Minorsky

has justly pointed out,

there

have been few laments for the passing of

those Iranian dynasties farther west,

that

also went down in the course

the 5th/nth century under Turkish pressure; yet the Buyids' court

at Ray and Shiraz, the Kakuyids' at Isfahan, and the Ziyarids' court

at Gurgan and Tabaristan gave shelter to such diverse geniuses as

al-Mutanabbi, Avicenna, and al-Biruni. To some extent these Western

attitudes reflect those of the contemporary Sunni Muslim sources

which

are distinctly favourable to dynasties like the Tahirids and

Samanids, sprung from the landed classes, while they are hostile to

those

plebeian origin, e.g. the Saffarids or to those tinged with Shfism

or unorthodoxy, such as the Buyids and Kakuyids.

The

collapse of the native Iranian dynasties of the north-east was

followed

within a few decades by a major migration of Turkish peoples,

the Oghuz, from the outer steppes. Similar population movements

have been recurrent features of the history of this region from early

times, for the Oxus and Syr Darya basins are a transitional zone between

Central

Asia

and the lands of ancient civilization in the Near East.

The

mountain chains of the Alburz [Elburz], Pamirs, and Hindu Kush

are high and, being geologically young, are sharp and jagged, yet they

have never seriously hindered the passage of armies and other peoples;

nor have invaders from the steppes ever found

that

the transition to the

Iranian plateau necessitated much change in their way of

life.

In order

for

a pastoralist economy to survive, each summer the flocks and

Sachau,

S.B.W.A.W.

vol. LXXIV

(1873),

pp.

290-301;

Barthold,

Turkestan, pp.

233-4,

275-9;

idem,

"Short

History

Turkestan",

pp. 18-19;

Tolstov,

Auf denSpuren, pp.

253-63,

286-91.

See, for

example,

Noldeke,

Das Iranische Nationalepos, pp. 40-1; and G. E. von

Grunebaum,

"Firdausi's

Concept

History",

in Islam, Essays in the Nature and Growth

a Cultural Tradition

(London,

1955),

pp.

168-84.

See V.

Minorsky,

Review

Spuler's

Iran

in friihislamischer Zeit in

Gottingische

Gelehrte

Antigen, vol.

ccvn

(1953),

pp. 192-7.